Well, I had one of those nights last night and I never had the chance to get back here to check on any responses that my question might have recieved. Guess it did get some responses, huh? /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif
First, let me thank all of you that offered some information and suggestions. I believe that as a result of your help, I have a better understanding of my situation and a clearer idea of how to handle it. I'll try to respond to some of the questions that some of you raised, but probably won't catch all of them.
The shingles are the original shingles, which makes them 16 years old. I called them 15 year shingles because that's what the gutter contractor called them. He was installing some new gutters, so he had a close up look at them, and I accepted that he knew what he was talking about. Although he is not specifically a "roofing" contractor, he has enough experience dealing with the exterior maintenance of homes that I accept what he says as being accurate. He did say that although he could tell they were worn, with some slight curling, they were in reasonably good shape considering how old they were. There is only 1 layer of shingles, and we have no known leaks.
We're planning on selling the house ourselves, with a start date of May 1st. We've already alerted our attorney, and will be meeting with him next week. I was definitely going to get roof repair estimates, both full tear off and replace and just the re-shingle job, just to have those in hand if someone wanted to use the possibility for a negotiating tactic. I'm also going to have a separate assessment done on the home.
Although I had not considered asking different realtors to come and evaluate the house at this time, I may just do that now to see what they have to say. That's a good idea.
I agree that realtors tend to have a bad reputation. A very good friend of ours just got stuck by a realtor in a situation very similar to another thread that was posted a short time ago. Our friend was selling the house that she got through her divorce, and the realtor talked her into reducing the asking price based on "what the market was doing" at that time. After the house was sold, our friend found out that the people that bought the house were friends of the realtor. There was another thread about this very thing a week or so ago. So stories like that tend to support the general belief that realtors are sharks.
However, my personal experience has been fairly positive. We sold our first house through a realtor, and it was a very easy process that actually got us a higher sale than what we were asking. I'm only trying to sell the house ourselves because I'm not crazy about losing the 6% commission (or whatever it might be) if I don't have to. We've decided that we'll give it 2 months, and if we haven't sold it by then, we'll turn it over to a realtor. I don't necessarily agree that the realtor is our "enemy". I will agree that as a seller, it is my responsibility to research the various realtors I might consider so that I can select the one that will do the best job for me. But like anything else, they are people who are only doing their jobs, and there will be good ones and there will be bad ones.
This house is definitely NOT a fixer upper! We've taken very good of the place, and I would not have a problem with showing it as it is. However, we have been repainting rooms that we felt that needed a little "freshening". I've sanded down, stained and varnished every window sill. I've relpaced the kitchen sink and the laundry tubs in the laundry room. We're painting a couple of the ceilings that we never painted, we've replaced the carpeting in 2 rooms. And this doesn't include the outside stuff that we've done or will be doing. My wife has been preparing homes for viewing on our local Parade of Homes for over 15 years, so she knows how to show a house. We're even bringing in some (borrowing) extra furniture for a room that we 've never really used just so that it looks "complete".
I believe that we've decided that we will get the roof repair estimates, just so that we have them. But we will not do anything. If a potential buyer asks, we will tell them that the roof is the original roof and that as far as we know, we do not have any leaks or any problems with it.
We actually do have a couple that are considering the house now. Via a mutual acquaintance, I've sent a message to them informing them that if they seriously would like to talk to us about buying the home, we would consider reducing the asking price since it would save us quite a bit of hassle from having to put it on the market. That would be the ideal solution!
Again, thank you all for the terrific information that you provided. This has been another fine example of how TBN members work together to help each other out. Yeah, the thread did begin to wander off topic a bit. But that happens around here most of the time anyway. Sometimes the wandering does add to the discussion, sometimes it doesn't.
